Abortion - Tooley's 'kitten/cat-person argument

Tooley’s kitten/cat-person argument (Tooley, 1972, pp.60-62) is intended to demonstrate that there is no moral significance in the notion of a foetus being a potential person, and that we should not treat foetuses as if they are persons merely due to this potentiality.

                Tooley’s example runs something like the following; imagine there was a chemical which, when injected into a kitten, would make it develop into a cat with the psychological characteristics of a human person (Tooley 1972, p.60). We would then have to consider kittens that have been injected with this chemical as having the same moral rights as human beings. However if you killed a kitten instead of injecting it with this chemical, he thinks that there would have been no seriously morally wrong action taken (sweeping aside the fact that pointlessly killing a kitten might be quite wrong in itself). His point is that it is no difference in killing a kitten when there is the potential to bestow person-like moral worth upon it than when there is not. He then goes on to say that even if we had injected it with the chemical, as long as the kitten had not fully developed the person-like attributes that would permit it person-like moral worth, then there is still nothing seriously morally wrong with either killing the kitten, or injecting it with another chemical to neutralize the first one (thereby stopping the process of the cat from developing person-like properties) (Tooley, 1972, pp.61-62).

                The example is intended to show that if there is nothing seriously wrong with destroying (Rachels’ euphemism for ‘killing’) an injected kitten with the potential to develop the human psychological qualities necessary for personhood, then there is also nothing wrong with destroying a foetus which, like the kitten, lacks the necessary human psychological characteristics of personhood, but holds potential to acquire them. The only difference between the two cases is that the foetus always had the potentiality whereas intervention would be required for the kitten. He is careful to state that he is not claiming a foetus has no qualities to give it moral worth, only that the conservative perspective of arguing against abortion on the basis of potentiality is flawed (Tooley, 1972, p.62).

Tooley’s argument is intended to be a direct refutation of the conservative view that abortion is morally wrong due to the fact it deprives a foetus of its potential to have a future life like ours (the living) (Tooley, 1972, p.55). The conservative view is that this potentiality bestows a strong moral significance upon a foetus, whereas Rachels feels this is morally irrelevant. His cat-person example is intended to provide an analogy which will show how when thinking of a non-human creature we would not ascribe the same moral worth purely on the basis of potentiality. In my view he overlooks the fact that it is still morally wrong to kill a kitten or a cat unnecessarily, and if this position holds then it may also be morally impermissible to kill a foetus. 

REFERENCES: 

• §  Tooley, Michael, 'Abortion and Infanticide', Philosophy and Public (extreme liberal view) Affairs Vol. 2 (1972). Reprinted in Dwyer & Feinberg (eds.) The Problem of Abortion.